The role of human capital and collaboration with academia for innovation in hospitality sector: the case of Mugla

              © PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. ISSN 1695-7121
Vol. 10 Nº 2. Special Issue. Pp. 77-84. 2012
www.pasosonline.org
The role of human capital and collaboration with academia
for innovation in hospitality sector: the case of Mugla
Ummuhan Gökovalı i
Mehmet Avcı ii
Muğla University (Turkey)
i Mugla University Department of Economics, Kotekli, Mugla, Turkey, ummuhan@mu.edu.tr.
ii Mugla University Department of Economics, Kotekli, Mugla, Turkey, mehmeta@mu.edu.tr.
Abstract: The relevance of human capital and collaboration with academia for innovation in the
hospitality sector has never been denied, but the empirical evidence for this link is inadequate as far
as Turkey is concerned. This paper intends to contribute to the knowledge in this area by employing
self generated survey data for the province of Mugla, which is one of the most attractive holiday
destinations in Turkey. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of human capital and co-llaboration
with academia on innovation performance of hospitality fi rms. The results of the survey
data and empirical investigation of logit and probit econometric models indicate that these factors are
indeed conducive factors for the innovation performance of hospitality fi rms.
Keywords: Innovation in Tourism; Determinant factors of innovation; Human capital; Collabora-tion
with academia.
Título: El papel del capital humano y la colaboración con las universidades en la innovación del
sector de hostelería: el caso de Mugla
Resumen: La literatura no niega la relevancia del capital humano y la colaboración con las universi-dades
en vistas a la innovación en el sector de hostelería, pero la evidencia empírica de este enlace es
insufi ciente por lo que se refi ere a Turquía. Este trabajo pretende contribuir al conocimiento en esta
área mediante el empleo de datos generados a través de una encuesta hecha en la provincia de Mugla,
uno de los destinos turísticos más atractivos de Turquía. El objetivo de este trabajo es investigar los
efectos del capital humano y la colaboración con instituciones académicas en el nivel de innovación
de las empresas de hostelería. Los resultados de los datos del estudio y la investigación empírica de
los modelos logit y probit econométricos indican que estos factores son realmente los que propician
la innovación en las empresas de hostelería.
Palabras clave: Innovación en turismo; Factores determinantes de la innovación; Capital humano;
Colaboración con la academia.
78
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
The role of human capital and collaboration ...
ISSN 1695-7121
Introduction
As in manufacturing sectors, economic perfor-mance,
survival and competitiveness of hospitality
fi rms depend on their innovation capabilities and
how quickly they adopt new technologies in their
management and organizational structure, and in
their accommodation and services facilities. The
recognized importance of innovation led to the surge
of research and this topic was investigated inten-sively
from different perspectives. While, the vast
majority of studies focus on manufacturing indus-tries,
there is small amount of research related to
innovation in the service sector and even less in the
hospitality sector.
Although innovation in the hospitality sector
lately attracts scholars in terms of the type of in-novation,
the determinant factors and the outcome
effects of innovation, there are few studies that spe-cifi
cally take into account the investment into hu-man
capital and collaboration with the university as
determinant factors of innovative activities of hospi-tality
fi rms. These studies are limited around the
world and very scarce in Turkey. As far as we know,
there is no study which specifi cally deals with the
relationship between innovation capabilities and in-vestment
into human capital and collaboration with
the university of hospitality fi rms in Turkey.
Given the lack of academic empirical research
for the link between innovative behaviors and in-vestment
in to human capital and collaboration
with the university of hospitality fi rms in Turkey,
this paper intends to contribute to the knowledge in
this area by employing self-generated survey data
for the district of Mugla, which is the second largest
tourist destination (both for national and interna-tional
tourists) in Turkey. The main purpose of this
study is to lay out innovative capabilities of hospi-tality
sector in the district of Mugla and empirically
compare and contrast similarities and differences
among hospitality fi rms in terms of innovation ca-pabilities
and investment in to human capital and
cooperation with the academia. For this purpose,
the second section surveys the literature on the role
of human capital and collaboration with academia
for hospitality fi rms, while section three summa-rizes
the main fi ndings of the questionnaire. Section
four employs logit and probit econometrics models
to determine the factors that affect innovation ca-pabilities
of hospitality fi rms. The last section is re-served
for concluding remarks.
Literature survey
Innovation studies go back to Schumpeter’s
(1934) analysis. Since then, both theoretical and
empirical contributions have been done into inno-vation
studies. Although Schumpeter’s analysis
was mainly applied to the manufacturing sector,
and innovation studies are still largely dominated
by manufacturing both in terms of the theory and
empirical analysis, innovation studies in the service
sector have also been developed (among others see,
Barras, 1986; Sundbo, 1997; Sirilli and Evangelista,
1998; Hughes and Wood, 2000; Drejer 2004; Tamura
et al., 2005). Hence the innovation approach devel-oped
originally for the manufacturing sector can
still be used to analyze services (Sundbo, 1997;
Sirilli and Evangelista, 1998; Hughes and Wood,
2000). However, service and manufacturing fi rms
differ from each other in terms of i-) the utilization
of intellectual property rights and existence of re-search
and development department (Sundbo, 1997,
Tamura et al., 2005), ii-) the types of innovation
(Sundbo, 1998), iii-) differences in responsiveness to
markets, low technology content of the service (tour-ism)
sector (Hjalager, 2002; Decelle, 2006) and iv-)
non-existence of university-business collaborations
in the service (tourism) sector (Hjalager, 2002).
Innovation analysis in the tourism sector can
be analyzed similarly to that of the service sector.
There are several classifi cations of innovations in
the tourism sector (for more detailed information see
among others Decelle, 2006; Hjalager, 1997; 2002;
Jacob and Groizard, 2007). Innovations in tourism
can be behavioral and technological or a mixture of
them. Weiermair (2006) distinguishes three factors
behind the innovation in tourism. These are supply
or supply-related determinants (for example new
technologies requiring development of new skills,
services or form of organizations in tourism such
as the development of e-tourism, and e-marketing
in tourism), demand drivers (social and economic
factors such as fl exible working time, more income
and increased value of holidays) and the level and
pace of competition (globalization and deregulation
increased competition and lead to process innova-tion)
(p. 60).
Hjalager (2010) distinguishes three theoretical
schools in explaining the determinants and driv-ing
forces of innovation in tourism. The fi rst one is
the Schumpeterian school where entrepreneurship
is viewed as a driving force in innovation behavior.
The second one is the technology-push/demand-pull
Ummuhan Gökovalı and Mehmet Avcı
ISSN 1695-7121
79
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
paradigm in which both concepts have some effects
on the innovation performance of tourism fi rms.
The third one is the Marshalian innovation systems
or innovation cluster approach. However, Hjalager
(2010) concludes that “there is a lack of comprehen-sive
empirical evidence to document the nature of
driving forces in innovation systems” (p. 5).
There are a small number of studies which spe-cifi
cally dealt with the innovation in the hospitality
sector. These studies are mostly concentrated on the
type of innovation within the hospitality sector. In
these studies process innovations are found to be
more important than product innovations (Jacob
et al., 2003; Blake et al., 2006; Jacob and Groizard,
2007). Product innovations are limited in the tour-ism
sector because tourism mainly depends on the
natural and manmade attractions of the destina-tion,
hence limiting the potential for product inno-vations
(Keller, 2006).
In terms of the technological area where techno-logical
innovations take place, the ICT area followed
by environmental innovations and the security area
constitute the largest part in the Latin American
(Mexico and Dominican Republic) chain (Balearic)
hotels (Jacob and Groizard, 2007). This picture is
similar to those found for the Balearic Islands (Or-fi
la-Sintes et al., 2005) except that a more innova-tive
behavior is found in kitchen and restaurant
equipment after the ICT area. The use of technolo-gies
usually embodied in new machinery, equipment
and software is the dominant innovation form in the
hospitality sector in the Balearic Islands (Orfi la-
Sintes et al., 2005).
There are several factors that affect innovation
behavior of hospitality fi rms, such as proximity and
clustering, thus facilitating knowledge spillovers.
Clustering with returns to scale factors can make
a region competitive in terms of provision of well
educated and trained personnel and infrastructure
(Decelle, 2006). The other important factor is the
utilization of information and communication tech-nologies
in tourism (Keller, 2006). Adaptation of in-formation
and communication technology and effi -
cient usage of these technologies are very important
factors for the development of the tourism sector as
well as for the sustainability of medium and small
sized fi rms.
Some others investigated the effects of innovation
on hotel performance and found a positive relation-ship
(Blake et al., 2006; Orfi la-Sintes and Mattsson,
2009), while others investigated the determinant
factors of innovation in the hospitality sector. The
hotels which use professional management instru-ments
and information technologies (Sundbo et al,
2007) and those which develop group and project
management skills, and learning culture (Kumar
et al., 2008) are more innovative compared to oth-ers.
Moreover, hotels which belong to chain, under
management contract and managed in lease proper-ties
are more innovative than hotels operating inde-pendently
or managed by the owners (Orfi la-Sintes
et al., 2005; Sundbo et al., 2007). Hotels are found
to be more innovative as the tour operators’ impor-tance
in booking (Orfi la-Sintes et al., 2005; Sundbo
et al., 2007) and the occupancy rate increase (Orfi la-
Sintes et al., 2005). Further, more than half of non-innovating
fi rms are contracted under a half-board
regime, while the customers of 53.5% of innovators
use full board or all-inclusive systems (Orfi la-Sintes
et al., 2005).
Firm size and innovation behavior are the other
researched areas within innovation studies in the
accommodation sector. Firms tend to be more inno-vative
as their size and/or scale or range of activities
increase (Hjalager, 2002; Jacob et al., 2003; Jacob
and Groizard, 2007; Sundbo et al., 2007). 3 and 4-5
star hotels are found to be more innovative, and in-novative
behavior of 1 and 2 star hotels include the
use of computer facilities and hardware (Orfi la-Sin-tes
et al., 2005).
The level of human capital and investment into
human capital is another key element in innovation
capabilities of fi rms. Employee training for the Tai-wanese
hotel industry (Chun-Yao et al, 2008) and
for independent hotels in Germany (Ottenbacher et
al., 2006) is found to be one of the important deter-minant
factors for innovation.
Firms’ age can be another important factor for
the innovation performance of companies. However,
its effect on innovation is ambiguous. While young
fi rms are expected to be more innovative than their
older counterparts due to less resistance to innova-tive
ideas, one can also expect just the opposite rela-tion
between the fi rms’ age and innovative behavior.
As fi rms’ age increases the innovation capabilities
increase as well due to fi rms’ learning-by doing, an
established name and reputation and continuous
improvements in their facilities (Pires et al., 2008).
Innovation In Hospitality Firms In Mugla Dis-trict
There is no available data concerning the inno-vative
activities of hospitality fi rms for Turkey in
80
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
The role of human capital and collaboration ...
ISSN 1695-7121
general and for Mugla in particular. In this study
self-generated survey data is employed to investi-gate
the role of human capital and collaboration
with academia on innovation capabilities of hospi-tality
fi rms. All hotels which have stars from 1 to 5
and holiday villages (fi rst and second class) around
the Mugla district are the target population and the
survey methodology is personnel interview at the
hotels. The list of hotels was accessed from the tour-ism
offi ce of the Mugla district. There are 331 hotels
which are categorized by star including holiday vil-lages.
Of these 200 hotels were contacted and 137
of them participated in the interview and answered
the questionnaire, which was previously tested us-ing
a pilot study and revised according to the feed-back
received.
Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of
the questionnaire results. According to the survey
results, 42.34% of hotels are innovative, whereas
57.66% of the hotels are not innovative2. Within
the innovating fi rms, a higher percentage of fi rms
hires a professional manager, have some kind of
certifi cations (these certifi cations include HACCP,
Environmental Management Standards, Service
Compliance Certifi cate, and other certifi cations),
and trained their employees. In terms of average
employee, investment and occupancy rate, innovat-ing
fi rms outperform the non-innovating fi rms.
Further, innovating fi rms collaborate with aca-demia
more frequently than non-innovating fi rms.
Small-sized fi rms are dominant in the hospitality
sector, followed by medium and big-sized fi rms. Most
of the innovating fi rms are medium sized whereas
most of the non-innovating fi rms are small-sized.
According to the survey results, innovative activity
seems to increase as fi rm size increases. As far as
the age of the fi rm is concerned, survey results in-dicate
that the average age of innovating fi rms is
higher than that of non-innovating fi rms.
Model and results
Our model is estimated by logit and probit esti-mation
methods. Our dependent variable takes the
value of 1 if the fi rm innovates and 0 otherwise. Four
sets of independent variables are of special interest
to this study. These are collaboration with academia,
fi rms’ size, fi rms’ capital and labor characteristics.
Collaboration with academia takes the value 1 if the
fi rm collaborates with the academia, zero otherwise.
Size is measured by the number of employees fol-lowing
Sundbo et al. (2007). To allow the non-linear
size effects we also include the size square in our es-timation.
Capital and labor characteristics include
variables such as investment (the share of invest-ment
in income), professional management (dummy
variable taking one if the hotel is managed by a
professional manager and zero otherwise), yearly
occupancy rate, non-certifi ed (dummy variable tak-ing
one if the hotel does not have any certifi cation
and zero otherwise), training of employees (dummy
variable taking one if training program is utilized
Table 1. Questionnaire Results, Descriptive Statistics
Innovating Firms
(58 - % 42.34)
Non- Innovating Firms
(79 - % 57.66)
Number % Number %
Professional Manager 54 93.10 6 7,60
Owner 4 6.90 73 92,40
Owner of Certification 55 94.82 28 35,44
Training 55 94.82 16 20.25
Collaboration with academia 18 31.04 1 1.27
Firm Size
Small (0-49 employee) 8 10.52 68 89.48
Medium (50-249) 42 79.25 11 20.75
Big (250 and more) 8 100 - -
Total 58 42.34 79 57.66
Average Employee 147.01 30.50
Average Investment (Percentage Share in
Annual Revenue)
21.69 13.26
Average Yearly Occupancy Rate 81.63 68.73
Average age 12.47 9.87
Ummuhan Gökovalı and Mehmet Avcı
ISSN 1695-7121
81
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
and zero otherwise) and continuous variable of age
of the fi rm. All variables are expected to have a posi-tive
impact on the probability of innovation of the
fi rm, except for variables of non-certifi ed and age of
the fi rm. The coeffi cient on non-certifi ed is expected
to be negative indicating that if the fi rm does not
have any kind of certifi cation, then its probability
to innovate decreases. A priori, the effect of the age
of the fi rm on innovation is not known as argued
above. Table 2 presents the estimation results.
Estimation results are consistent with the expec-tations
and all coeffi cients are signifi cant at conven-tional
levels. Wald tests indicate that both regres-sions
are signifi cant as a whole and Pseudo R2 is
respectively high indicating that our models have a
good predictive power. We also performed a test to
determine whether there is any misspecifi cation in
our model and the Link test indicates that there is
none.
The estimation results indicate that as the fi rms’
investment and its capacity utilization increase, the
probability of innovation increases as well. Firms
who allocate budget to new investments (such as
new technologies and equipment, or update old tech-nologies
and equipment) have higher probability to
innovate. Further, as occupancy rate increases, the
probability to innovate increases as well. This fi nd-ing
is similar to that of Orfi la-Sintes et al. (2005).
Firms which hire a professional manager are more
inclined to innovate. Professional management is
very important in the introduction of innovation as
suggested by our study and others (Sundbo et al.
2007; Kumar et al., 2008).
If the fi rm does not have any certifi cation, its
probability of innovating decreases compared to
other fi rms which have any kind of certifi cation.
Hotels with any certifi cations are more inclined to
innovate since they have to invest and adopt new
Figures in parenthesis are robust standard errors. *,**,*** refer signifi cance level at 10%, 5%, and 1% respec-tively.
Table 2. Logit and Probit Estimation Results
Variables Logit Coefficients Probit Coefficients
Investment 0.68***
(0.21)
0.38***
(0.09)
Occupancy Rate 0.83***
(0.21)
0.46***
(0.11)
Non-Certified -9.61***
(2.25)
-5.49***
(1.31)
Number of Employees -0.15***
(0.05)
-0.09***
(0.03)
(Number of Employees)2 0.0003***
(0.0001)
0.0002***
(0.0001)
Training 15.67***
(3.48)
9.04***
(2.09)
Professional Management 11.85***
(2.79)
6.66***
(1.57)
Collaboration with Academia 4.3***
(1.39)
2.34***
(0.79)
The age of firm -0.58**
(0.27)
-0.29***
(0.09)
Constant -82.18
(21.15)
-45.71
(10.92)
Number of Observations 134 134
Wald chi2(9) 23.65 31.2
Prob > chi2 0.0049 0.0003
Pseudo R2 0.8984 0.8972
Link Test -0.007 -0.011
82
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
The role of human capital and collaboration ...
ISSN 1695-7121
procedures and requirements and while doing this,
their probability to innovate increases. In the litera-ture
that we were able to reach, we could not fi nd
any study that specifi cally take certifi cation into ac-count
while investigating the innovative behaviors
of the accommodation sector. So it is not possible to
compare our results with any other study.
The coeffi cient on training is positive and signifi -
cant. Firms who trained their employees are more
likely to innovate than others. Our fi nding is simi-lar
to that of Orfi la-Sintes and Mattson (2009) and
Chun-Yao et al (2008). Collaboration with academia
is found to have a positive impact on the innova-tion
probabilities of fi rms. We could not compare
our results with any other study since we could not
fi nd any empirical investigation which specifi cally
takes into account the effect of collaboration with
academia on innovation performance of fi rms.
We fi nd signifi cant coeffi cients on size and size
squared. As size increases, the probability to in-novate
decreases; however, once the threshold is
achieved then an increase in size increases the prob-ability
of innovation. The sign on coeffi cients on size
square indicates that the probability to innovate
increases once the economies of scale are achieved.
There is an indication that economies of scale might
exist in the accommodation sector. Our fi ndings in-dicate
that there is a U-shape relationship between
innovation probability and fi rm size.
As far as we know there is no study in the tour-ism
literature that specifi cally takes into account
non-linearity in innovation with respect to size;
hence we could not compare our results with any
other study in the tourism literature. However, in
other studies it is found that larger fi rms are more
innovative than the small ones (Hjalager, 2002; Ja-cob
et al., 2003; Jacob and Groizard, 2007; Sundbo
et al., 2007).
Our empirical fi ndings indicate that as fi rms get
older, the probability to innovate decreases. This
result is confi rmed by both models. This fi nding
suggests that aged fi rms may show resistance to in-novation
or be unable to change their managerial
positions or renew facilities according to a more de-manding
environment. More research is needed in
this area.
Concluding remarks
This study investigated the role of human capi-tal
and collaboration with academia on innovation
performance of hospitality fi rms by employing self-generated
survey data obtained from the district of
Mugla which is the second largest tourist attraction
in Turkey. The econometric logit and probit model
is estimated by utilizing the survey data. Estima-tion
results indicate that besides conventional fac-tors
of innovation in the hospitality sector such as
investment, management type and occupancy rate,
human capital and collaboration with academia are
important determinant factors of innovation perfor-mance
of fi rms as well.
With the increasing competition around the
globe, innovation becomes the center of attention.
Firms and enterprises should be aware of the po-tentials
for innovation, such as new business mod-els,
additional investment for not only renewal of
the existing equipment but also new equipment
and installations. Weiermair (2006) claims that the
challenge for the future in the tourism sector is “to
provide increased value for money either through
innovation-driven changes in production and mar-keting
processes that reduce costs or product changes
that offer more varied tourism experiences for qual-ity
conscious customers”.
Innovation-oriented tourism policy is needed to
have sustainable growth for the economy as a whole
and for the tourism fi rms. These policies in the hos-pitality
sector should aim to promote fi rst the qual-ity
of education. The problem in the tourism sector
is that it usually attracts staff with little or no in-dustry-
relevant training with a high labor turnover
at a low salaries and non-standard working condi-tions.
There is not widespread dedicated career sys-tem
in the traditional sense in the tourism sector
(Hjalager, 2002). To overcome these problems, in-vestment
in human capital in the tourism sector is
severely needed. As Blake et al. (2006) suggest, gov-ernment
policy for training can overcome the prob-lem
of underinvestment of human capital by busi-nesses.
Second, collaboration with academia should
be promoted. Our empirical evidence supports the
view that university-sector relation is important for
innovation performance, and thus for the overall
performance of fi rms in tourism.
Sundbo et al. (2007) claim that larger fi rms are
able to employ people with more education, thus in-creasing
the possibility of innovation. They suggest
that policy makers should give more importance to
education and managerial professionalism in the
tourism industry and promote the use of IT in the
tourist industry. They claim that “destination build-ing
based on large-scale tourism fi rms may sustain
innovative and thus competitive tourist destina-
Ummuhan Gökovalı and Mehmet Avcı
ISSN 1695-7121
83
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
tions.” (p. 104).
Our fi ndings suggest that increasing innova-tive
activity of fi rms can involve several policy ac-tions.
These are; i) investment in both human and
physical capital, ii) promotion of collaboration with
academia, professional management and ownership
of certifi cation by fi rms, iii) taking measures to in-crease
capacity utilization of fi rms and iv) promo-tion
of larger fi rms so that economies of scale can be
achieved. All these can be achieved by the stimulat-ing,
coordinating and promoting role of the state.
References
Barras, R.
1986 Towards a theory of innovation in services. Re-search
Policy, 15(4): 161-173.
Blake, A., Sinclair, M. T. and Soria, J. A. C.
2006 Tourism productivity: Evidence from the Unit-ed
Kingdom. Annals of Tourism Research, 33(4):
1099-1120.
Chun-Yao, T., Hui-Yueh, K. and Shou-Shiung, C.
2008 Confi guration of innovation and performance
in the service industry: Evidence from the Tai-wanese
hotel industry. The Service Industries
Journal, 28(7): 1015-1028.
Decelle , X.
2006 A dynamic conceptual approach to innovation
in tourism. In: Innovation and Growth in Tour-ism
(pp. 85-106). Paris: OECD.
Drejer, I.
2004 Identifying innovation in surveys of services: A
Schumpeterian perspective. Research Policy, 33:
551-562.
Hjalager, A. M.
1997 Innovation patterns in sustainable tourism:
An analytical typology. Tourism Management,
18 (1): 35-41.
Hjalager, A. M.
2002 Repairing innovation defectiveness in tourism.
Tourism Management, 23: 465-474.
Hjalager, A. M.
2010 A review of innovation research in tourism.
Tourism Management, 31: 1-12.
Hughes, A. and Wood, E.
2000 Rethinking innovation comparisons between
manufacturing and services: The experience of
the CBR SME Surveys in the UK. In J. S. Met-calfe,
I. Miles (eds.), Innovation Systems in the
Service Economy Measurement and Case Study
Analysis (pp. 105-124). Boston: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
Jacob, M., Tintore, J., Aguilo, E., Bravo, A. and Mu-let,
J.
2003 Innovation in the tourism sector: Results from
a pilot study in the Balearic Islands. Tourism
Economics, 9(3): 279-295.
Jacob, M. and Groizard, J. L.
2007 Technology transfer and multinationals: The
case of Balearic hotel chains’ investments in
two developing economies. Tourism Manage-ment,
28: 976-992.
Keller, P.
2006 Innovation and tourism policy. In: Innovation
and Growth in Tourism (pp.17-40), OECD: Par-is.
Kumar, U., Kumar, V. and Grosbois, D.
2008 Development of technological capability by
Cuban hospitality organizations. Journal of
Hospitality Management, 27(1): 12-22.
Orfi la-Sintes, F., Crespi-Cladera, R. and Martinez-
Ros, E.
2005 Innovation activity in the hotel industry: Evi-dence
from Balearic Islands. Tourism Manage-ment,
26: 851-865.
Orfi la-Sintes, F. and Mattsson, J.
2009 Innovation behavior in the hotel industry.
Omega, 37: 380-394.
Ottenbacher, M., Shaw, V. and Lockwood, A.
2006 An investigation of the factors affecting inno-vation
performance in chain and independent
hotels. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospi-tality
and Tourism, 6(3/4): 113-128.
Pires, C., P., Sarker, S. and Carvalho, L.
2008 Innovation in services-how different from
manufacturing? The Service Journal, 28(10):
1339-1356.
Schumpeter, J. A.
1934 The Theory of Economic Development: An In-quiry
into Profi ts, Capital, Credit, Interest and
the Business Cycle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Sirilli, G. and Evangelista R.
1998 Technological innovation in services and man-ufacturing:
Results from Italian surveys. Re-search
Policy, 27: 882-899.
Sundbo, J.
1997 Management of innovation in services. The
Service Industries Journal, 17(3): 432-455.
Sundbo, J.
1998 The Organization of Innovation in Services. Al-dershot:
Edward Elgar.
Sundbo, J., Orfi la-Sintes, F. and Sorensen, F.
2007 The innovative behavior of tourism fi rms-
84
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
The role of human capital and collaboration ...
ISSN 1695-7121
comparative studies of Denmark and Spain.
Research Policy, 36: 88-106.
Tamura, S., Sheehan, J., Martinez, C. and Ker-groach,
S.
2005 Promoting innovation in services. In Enhanc-ing
the Performance of the Service Sector.
OECD/RIETI, 133-177.
Weiermair, K.
2006 Product improvement or innovation: What is
the key to success in tourism? In Innovation
and Growth in Tourism. OECD.
Notes
1 There are 5 parts and 44 questions in the questionnaire.
The fi rst part aimed to identify basic information about
hotels. The second part was designed to address the list
and description of novelties or improvements. The third
part aimed to identify characterization of innovation
activities. The fourth and fi fth part includes questions
concerning human capital characteristics of fi rms and
collaboration with academia.
2 Following the literature and defi nition of in-novation
in service sector of OECD, we defi ned technological im-provement
and innovation and ask whether fi rm is en-gaged
with any kind of these activities. If the answer is
yes then we categorize these fi rms as innovating fi rms.
Recibido: 15/02/2011
Reenviado: 30/09/2011
Aceptado: 31/10/2011
Sometido a evaluación por pares anónimos